San Ysidro student among 5 killed at TJ gathering

UPDATE

An eighth-grade student at San Ysidro Middle School was one of the five victims shot to death Saturday night at a family gathering in Tijuana’s Colonia Tres de Octubre neighborhood.

Ulysses Daniel Castrejon Beltran, 13, “was a very bright student, a very popular student,” said Manuel H. Paul, superintendent of the San Ysidro School District. “Students and teachers are taking it very hard.”

David Torres, principal of the 1,200-student school, said grief counselors were talking to students and staff on Monday morning.

“He was one of those all-around guys, nice to everyone. Great kid,” Torres said. “He was a student you could want to model other students by.”

No information was immediately available regarding Ulysses’ family members or memorial services for him.

TIJUANA  A 13-year-old boy was among five male victims shot to death by gunmen who stormed a family gathering Saturday night in the tough central Tijuana neighborhood known as Colonia Tres de Octubre, authorities reported Sunday.

Survivors of the attack, which was reported about 8:30 p.m., told Tijuana Municipal Police that three assailants wearing black military-style clothing and carrying high-caliber weapons ordered the women to the floor and took the males to the kitchen, then shot them.

The Baja California Attorney General’s Office described the incident as a settling of scores between criminal groups. The attack comes after a period of relative calm in Tijuana without such high-profile attacks.

Omar Cabrera Bengochea is a onetime Tijuana police officer accused of working for the Sinaloa cartel. His brother, Daniel Alberto Cabrera Bengochea, was killed in an attack Saturday in Tijuana. Tijuana Municipal Police

+Read Caption

Omar Cabrera Bengochea is a onetime Tijuana police officer accused of working for the Sinaloa cartel. His brother, Daniel Alberto Cabrera Bengochea, was killed in an attack Saturday in Tijuana.

Authorities said that one of the victims, Daniel Alberto Cabrera Bengochea, 28, was the brother of a former municipal police officer named Omar Cabrera Bengochea who has been linked to the Sinaloa cartel. Authorities have said that Omar Cabrera worked as the head of security for Alfredo Arteaga González, also known as El Aquíles, suspected of being one of the main operators in the region for the Sinaloa cartel.

The 13-year-old victim died at a hospital, and was identified as Ulysses Daniel Castrejón Beltrán, according to the Baja California Attorney General’s Office. The other victims were identified as Edgar Pérez Martínez, 37; Hipolito Beltrán Ríos, 56 and Fernando Meléndez García, 31.

A spokeswoman for the Attorney General’s Office said that state police detained armed suspects following the incident in the Rosarito Beach neighborhood of Colonia Aztlan, but it remained unclear whether they had been linked to the incident.

High-profile attacks spiked in Tijuana starting 2008, following a split in the Arellano Félix organization, a group that once controlled drug trafficking region but grew weaker over the years with arrests and the deaths of several top leaders. The battle between the rival groups contributed to unprecedented violence, with 844 killings that year.

The city’s 478 homicides in 2011 represented a 40 percent drop compared with 2010, leading some analysts to conclude that rival groups operating in the region and loyal to the remnants of the Arellanos or to the Sinaloa cartel had found a way to co-exist.